From tragedy to opportunity: A case study assessment on the controlled disposal facility at Payatas, Quezon City, Philippines

This paper presents the results of the case study assessment on the controlled dumpsite facility located at Payatas, Quezon City, Philippines. The facility formerly was an open dumpsite, which has a tragic history of more than 30 years of misuse, and on July 1, 2000 a hill of garbage fell on a slum community resulting in the death of nearly 300 people buried alive and leaving hundreds of families homeless. To address this problem, the dumpsite was converted to a controlled-waste disposal facility and undergone construction for an engineered sanitary landfill. Likewise, it was developed from waste to energy facility, i.e., the conversion of methane gas generated from waste into electricity – the first clean development mechanism (CDM) project in solid waste management in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. The article used the assessment tool developed under the Integrated Sustainable Solid Waste Management in Asia (ISSOWAMA) Project, funded by the European Commission, which aims at evaluating case studies on solid waste management from different Asian countries. As such, major sections of this paper discuss the findings on the performance of the six evaluation criteria of technical, environment and health, financial and economic, socio- cultural, institutional, and legal and policy performances. The paper briefly introduces the ISSOWAMA Project – its objectives as well as some of its main activities that resulted in the evaluation of this particular case. It also discusses the methodology employed in the identification, documentation and evaluation of the case studies using the integrated and sustainable solid waste management method that the Project is espousing. Lastly, it draws lessons/recommendations and implications to planning and management in terms of sustainable waste management for local government units (LGUs) based on the results of the assessment, as well as, from the authors’ opinion as experts in the field